


just like the 80’s films

by peaksykid



Category: Bastille (Band), Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Genre: Awkward Crush, M/M, Mutual Pining, ready player one au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 15:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaksykid/pseuds/peaksykid
Summary: Frustration with hitting a snag in their efforts to decipher the secrets of Halliday’s Easter Egg Hunt threatens to drive a wedge between Kyle and Dan. But are they actually closer together than they realize?(it’s a Ready Player One AU. happy April Fools Day. except I’m not even fooling tbh I actually love this and no one can stop me.)





	1. 1

“Dan, shut the fuck up.”

Kyle’s avatar leaned back in the chair and scowled at Dan. His elf ears twitched. 

“There is NO way that riddle thing is about Twin Peaks. You say EVERYTHING is about Twin Peaks. Halliday didn’t even LIKE Twin Peaks!”

“You’re wrong there,” Will said, opening his digital copy of the Almanac. “Halliday USED to like Twin Peaks. But the 2017 Return pissed him off so bad that he swore off the show forever and personally invited David Lynch to kiss his ass.” He flipped the hologram pages until he found what he was looking for. “See, look. September 5, 2017, the day the last episode came out: “That sucked. David Lynch can kiss my ass.””

“Quit blasting David Lynch! He’s an artist,” Dan snapped. “And you guys are wrong. Twin Peaks is totally Halliday canon.”

“Whatever you say, D,” Kyle said, and turned back to his notes.

Arguments like this had plagued Dan, Kyle, Will, Woody, and Charlie, better known as the High 5, for the past month. They’d hit a snag in their efforts to decipher the secrets of the Hunt, and frustration was beginning to bring them to the sparring point.

The five men spent nearly all their time, as did every other human on Earth, in the immersive virtual reality game called the OASIS. Five years ago, James Donovan Halliday, creator of the OASIS, had died. In his will, he’d began the Hunt, the contest to find a hidden “Easter egg” somewhere in the vast realms of the OASIS. The first to find it inherited all of Halliday’s fortune and ownership of the gaming company that ran the whole simulation—so naturally, everyone in the world wanted to find it.

The thing was, Halliday had built the puzzle around his obsessions, which mostly consisted of retro pop culture trivia, or what Woody referred to as “nerd shit”. And for the first four years of the contest, the mystery of the nerd shit had proved too difficult for anyone to decipher.

Until the guys had stumbled across the first clue.

Apart from Dan, the High 5 weren’t even originally “gunters”, or professional egg hunters. Dan had always been fascinated by Halliday’s obsessions with pop culture, being a movie and television buff himself, and he’d been looking for the egg on and off for a few years before accidentally discovering the Copper Key sticking out of the side of a cliff. The next clue had been buried in a replica of an obscure Simpsons episode underneath a Hollywood star. The boys had gotten caught up in the search, as they gained more and more attention for being the first to get close—but now, they were in a rut.

“I mean, really! What else could this mean?” Dan said, brandishing the mysterious key they’d gotten from the last challenge. Engraved on it was what appeared to be a riddle:

“Between the sky and dual spires  
The clue will walk along with fires”

They’d been staring at it aimlessly for the past month, hanging out in Kyle’s basement chatroom and seeking out leads, but mostly wasting time messing around with other side quests in the world of the OASIS. Charlie had found some cool artifacts (including a sword called the Scottish Sword which apparently cursed the enemies of anyone who said its true name) but nothing had led them to the hiding place of the Jade Key, the next piece of the challenge to get to the Egg.

“Would you nerds quit arguing already?” Woody looked up from the arcade game he was playing. “All you do is bicker. We’re probably pushing ourselves further back. The Sixers will get it before us at this rate.”

The Sixers worked for the infamous media company known as WWCOMMS, and they sought the Egg too, but not for the glory of it. Their goal was to claim it for their company so that they could take over the whole of the OASIS, and they were led by a strange, plotting CEO named Laslo Panoflex. The boys had run into him at one point before, and they’d barely escaped. His avatar was always armed to the teeth with the most expensive weapons money could buy, and he’d nearly killed Dan’s avatar before when hunting down that first gate in Springfield. Laslo and the Sixers were cheaters, and like all other gunters, Dan and the boys hated them.

“”Dual spires” is clearly a reference to Lord of the Rings. You KNOW Halliday loved Lord of the Rings, D. The dude would’ve probably fucked a hobbit if given the chance,” said Kyle.

“Says the wanker with elf ears,” Dan muttered. 

“You shut the fuck up about my elf ears!” said Kyle, standing up, fists balled.

Right now, in the real world, Kyle stood alone in his apartment in London, VR glasses and haptic gloves on. He moved his hands to control his character moving forward, and talked into his microphone.

In the game, Kyle shoved Dan lightly. “Look, I’m fed up of all this arguing too, but you’re just plain wrong about this clue. We’re running out of time. The Sixers have a whole team on this thing, they’ll figure out in no time, and we have to beat them to it. We don’t have time to fight.”

“Would you guys humor me and just look?” Dan said, looking pained. “I...I really think I’m really on to something.”

“Fine,” said Will. “One of us will go with you.” But Will didn’t offer, and neither did Woody or Charlie. They just kind of stood there, Woody’s avatar’s spaceman helmet blinking out its usual star patterns. The silence in the virtual room was almost palpable.

“Well, just so that we don’t keep standing in a circle like dumbasses, I’ll go with Dan,” Kyle announced, pulling his laser gun from his inventory. “I’m ready. Where was this planet you thought it was on again?”

In his apartment, behind his visor, Dan blinked, surprised. With the amount he and Kyle had been bickering lately, he hadn’t expected him to want to come along.

“Woody and Will and I will go to the Tolkien planet. I think there’s a real good chance the key is down in the Gollum cave, you know,” said Charlie. He pivoted on his heels and motioned for the other boys to follow him out of the chatroom, cape billowing behind him. “Let’s go! Onward! The journey awaits!”

Dan snickered. Charlie always got so into the game. He’d always been the dramatic type.

Will followed Charlie out, as did Woody. Just before leaving, Woody spun around and made finger guns at the waiting Kyle and Dan.

“You two have fun in there,” he said, and winked.

Dan and Woody had met in the real world before, long before the Hunt began. They’d not realized it at the time, but they had used to work at the same music store. After running into each other again in the OASIS, they’d become close friends, and Woody knew a ton of Dan’s secrets.

He also knew Dan had a major crush on Kyle.

Dan blushed behind his headset. He was glad his avatar didn’t show it.


	2. 2

The two boys piled into Dan’s spaceship. Dan was pretty proud of the old thing. He’d won it off a guy in a PVP competition a few years back, and he’d named it the Icarus after his favorite story from Greek mythology. It was well worn, but well loved. 

“You mind if I pick the playlist? It should take about an hour to get to the planet. I wanna save coins,” said Dan.

“Oh sure,” Kyle said absentmindedly, looking out the window into digital space. He sat down in the chair next to Dan as Dan charted their course. Kyle was sitting down in the real world now too, on the ratty couch he kept in the corner of his apartment. 

Dan’s retro music playlist clicked on. Dreams by Fleetwood Mac floated from the virtual speakers. The stars outside raced by, streaking across space in high-resolution animation. 

The ads always said that the OASIS was 91% indistinguishable from reality, if you ignored all the magic items and technology. Kyle’d never been on a spaceship in the real world, obviously, but he assumed that if he had, it would look at least a little bit like this.

He had to admit, he was embarrassingly glad to be alone with Dan. He’d had a crush on him ever since they’d come across the Copper Key at the same time. Despite how dorky Dan could be with his constant references to pop culture, Kyle found it endearing. Dan was a ray of sunshine, and in a world where going outside was a rarity, that was something to hold onto.

But he was afraid to tell him. For one, Dan might not even be Dan. Dan could be, as the saying goes, a 50-year-old guy named Chuck who lived in his mother’s basement. Kyle doubted Dan was lying about his identity, but in the OASIS, you had to be careful. People could hide their identities as easily as changing their name and avatars. And there was no guarantee that Dan looked anything like his avatar.

Kyle had kept his avatar looking fairly similar to his real life self, apart from the elf ears, because, in his opinion, why wouldn’t you give yourself elf ears if you could? Really. But he didn’t know if Dan’s real appearance was that of the dark-haired man with the swooshed-up hair, although something in him just said that Dan couldn’t be that far off from it.

“You ever think about what you’d do if you won?” said Dan, startling Kyle out of his train of thought.

“You—you mean WHEN I win,” Kyle said, trying to sound confident. 

“I honestly don’t know what I’d do,” said Dan. “This world’s so fucked up, mate, I would wanna do something to fix it. I feel like I’d donate a lot of the money. Maybe build homes for people to live in, get food sent out more efficiently, that type of thing.”

Kyle was silent for a minute. 

“Well, that sure makes my idea of building a real life spaceship and blasting the fuck off this planet to go to Mars or whatever seem really selfish and lame, huh.”

Dan laughed, a bright, yet soft sound.

“Well, to be real with you sometimes I feel that too.” He sighed, and leaned back in the captain’s chair. “We’re living in a fucked up world, Kyle. The OASIS is only marginally less fucked up.”

“Always the optimist, you are,” teased Kyle.

“Oh, so we’re talking like Yoda now are we? A dick are you,” shot back Dan, grinning in both the game and real life.

Kyle loved Dan’s laugh so much. He wished he had the courage to tell him so.

“Listen, I hope I’m not wasting your time too much with this. I really appreciate you trusting me, though. You’re fuckin brilliant, you know that?” Dan shoved Kyle’s shoulder a little, and in the real world, Kyle felt the pressure on his VR suit.

“Nah, it’s not a big deal. I snapped at you earlier, that was kind of dumb,” said Kyle. “Besides, I didn’t really wanna go to Mordor. Too hot for me,” he laughed.

The Icarus lurched to a slowed pace and began to enter orbit. They’d arrived at the planet. A small world in Sector 15, it was, like many others, a replica of a place from a pop culture icon—in this case, the surface of the planet was covered in replicas of the town of Twin Peaks and the surrounding forests. 

“We gonna teleport down there?” Kyle asked. 

“Yeah,” Dan said, already adjusting the teleporter settings. “Any of these spots should work. All the copies are the same. I’ve been here before.”

“You have? Actually, scratch that, of course you have. This place is prolly right on the way to David Lynch’s ass, where you currently reside.”

“Oh fuck off.”

Within minutes, the boys were on the surface. Tall, weathered-looking Douglas Fir trees stretched up towards the sky in every direction. 

Dan stepped onto the road, tentatively, Kyle following behind him. Suddenly, in the middle of the road, Dan disappeared. 

“Dan? What the fuck!” Kyle ran towards the spot Dan had been, and in an instant found himself in the passenger seat of a car.

Dan was in the drivers seat, but the car seemed to be moving on its own.

“Dan, what the hell is happening? Did it do this when you came here?”

[INCORRECT DIALOGUE. 3 MISSES LEFT]

Dan shook his head vigorously, but then looked forward at the road. In his hand was a tape recorder, the type used in old timey detective movies.

“Diane, 7:30 am, February twenty-fourth. Entering town of Twin Peaks. Five miles south of the Canadian border, twelve miles west of the state line. Never seen so many trees in my life.”

[+100 POINTS. ACTION BONUS! +150]

Kyle got it now. Dan was supposed to be imitating Dale Cooper. This puzzle must rely on the challengers acting out the scenes of an episode of Twin peaks.

He grinned. For once, it was a good thing Dan was such a Twin Peaks nerd.

Kyle kept quiet, prompting Dan for dialogue whenever he needed it. The game didn’t seem to have registered his presence as a character so he was able to help. It wasn’t technically cheating, as Kyle couldn’t look up the lines (it seemed to be blocked in this part of the simulation) but could remind him of them if he forgot. 

Dan looked pretty cute when he was pretending to be a mystery show detective. But then again, he always looked cute.

They made it to the end of the pilot episode, and suddenly the whole area went black. Kyle took a step back instinctively.

Dan found that he was holding a log—it looked like the Log Lady’s log. As Kyle watched, the wood caught on fire in his hands, and quickly burned away to reveal—

“Holy shit, Dan, it’s the Jade Key!” 

There was a [ding] sound, and Dan and Kyle realized that their names on the global Hunt scoreboard had been updated. They had gotten the Key. They were one step closer to winning.

Dan’s grin was contagious, and Kyle found himself laughing. They fucking did it!! 

“See, aren’t you glad you trusted me?” Dan said.

“Yeah, I sure fucking am! I should trust you more often if you’re gonna do stuff like this,” said Kyle, turning the Key over. “Where’s the next clue?”

Dan held up a piece of parchment. On it were some weird squiggles that didn’t look like much of anything.

“What the hell is this? It looks like a light bulb on top of someone’s leg...No, maybe it’s a lamp—“

“Whatever it is, we gotta go tell Will and Charlie and Woody about it! Come on!” Kyle tugged Dan’s hand, before realizing what he’d done. He hadn’t actually grabbed Dan’s hand before, other than when they’d fought back to back against the Sixers at the last challenge. Dan’s hand, although virtual, was warm, and Kyle quickly let go out of embarrassment.

“No, just. Can you stay a second, Kyle?”

Dan hoped his facial recognition software wasn’t betraying how nervous he was. There was something he’d wanted to tell Kyle for a long time.

“Kyle....”

“I think I like you!” Kyle blurted out. “In a romantic way.” Shit, is that even a proper way to ask someone out? Kyle hadn’t dated anyone in so long, and he worried all his time in the OASIS had made him awkward. What the fuck, he really was awkward. “Fuck, I’m so awkward, what am I saying. God just forget I said anything, you’re just really cute and nice and I know you’re probably some dude named Chuck in a basement but still I just—“

Kyle was bright red, and his elf-eared avatar showed it, blushing like mad.

“Kyle. Calm down, mate.” Dan took his hands in his.”

“I was literally about to say the same thing to you.”

The light in Kyle’s eyes lit up like a supernova.

“Really? R-really? I’m—“

Dan broke into such a big grin. “Yeah, really.”

And even though it was only virtual, the embrace Dan gave Kyle felt as real as anything.

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t believe I wrote a Ready Player One au. Kiss my ass ernie clernie


End file.
